Standardizing data reporting in the research community to enhance the utility of open data for SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance

SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection in wastewater is being rapidly developed and adopted as a public health monitoring tool worldwide. With wastewater surveillance programs being implemented across many different scales and by many different stakeholders, it is critical that data collected and shared are accompanied by an appropriate minimal amount of meta-information to enable meaningful interpretation and use of this new information source and intercomparison across datasets. While some databases are being developed for specific surveillance programs locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally, common globally-adopted data standards have not yet been established within the research community. Establishing such standards will require national and international consensus on what meta-information should accompany SARS-CoV-2 wastewater measurements. To establish a recommendation on minimum information to accompany reporting of SARS-CoV-2 occurrence in wastewater for the research community, the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Coordination Network on Wastewater Surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 hosted a workshop in February 2021 with participants from academia, government agencies, private companies, wastewater utilities, public health laboratories, and research institutes. This report presents the primary two outcomes of the workshop: (i) a recommendation on the set of minimum meta-information that is needed to confidently interpret wastewater SARS-CoV-2 data, and (ii) insights from workshop discussions on how to improve standardization of data reporting